Friday roundup

Excellent piece by Rev. Dr. Carolyn Moore at the Wesleyan Covenant Association's website on why she responds to the looming UMC split with relief, even as she's dismayed at the death of courage that brought the denomination to this juncture:

Without context, the headlines in the national media might seem harsh and this plan to separate may come as a surprise. But for many who have been on this journey for years, this represents a significant and hopeful step forward. Most headlines last week led with the idea that the crux of the crisis is a disagreement over our sexual ethics, teachings on marriage, and the ordination of LBTQ+ clergy. I want to emphasize that the crisis in the UM Church does not rest on just these issues. Others agree. In a recent essay accurately entitled, “The Sad, Necessary Division of the United Methodist Church” David French writes:

“The secular media will cast the divide primarily in the terms it understands—as focused on “LGBT issues” – but that’s incomplete. The true fracturing point between Mainline and Evangelical churches is over the authority and interpretation of scripture. The debate over LGBT issues is a consequence of the underlying dispute, not its primary cause… there is a strain of Protestant Christianity that views the Bible as valuable but not infallible or inerrant. Evangelical Christians, by contrast, strongly dissent from that view.”

That seems an accurate statement to me. Our divide has been forming for years over multiple issues that are very real and very deep. They strike at the fundamentals of historical Christian orthodoxy. How we interpret scripture and relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ is at the headwaters of this crisis, but it is also important to note that our inability to hold one another accountable where we disagree only exacerbates the problem. When some of our leaders are unwilling to hold us accountable to the time-honored way we make decisions at our General Conferences, the result is a kind of disorder and dysfunction that is excruciating.

The hard reality we must admit today is that while we traditionalists have won votes at General Conference, we have not really held the line of orthodoxy within the UM Church. While we are thankful for the reaffirmation of our teachings, some of our American colleagues openly resist what we have reaffirmed. With no theological or ethical accountability and no will among many bishops to establish accountability, there is no line left to hold. Most of us – from across the theological divide – recognize we can no longer go on this way.

Some would implore us to stay in the current situation and keep voting for traditional values at General Conference, as if we might eventually wear down our progressive colleagues and compel them to leave. I have zero faith in that eventuality. A colleague in my conference who serves on the board of a progressive movement within the UM Church told me without blinking an eye, “We will never leave.” And I believe her. Why would she? With accountability on these matters gone – and it is – her approach is working to a degree; it is a functional response. So, we frustrate her sincerely held views on very important matters, and in return she and colleagues in her theological camp frustrate our sincerely held beliefs. This is not a healthy dynamic for a supposedly united church.

Friends, let’s support this protocol. Let’s get ourselves out of an Egypt filled with conflict and bitterness. The protocol might not be the promised land, but once we are out of the Egypt we are living in, we traditionalists can participate with the Holy Spirit in building a vital and fruitful movement that reflects our faith and the faith of our fathers. Our ground – the ground I want to be standing on – is on the other side of separation, where we can make choices from a place of strength, and without the anarchy we live in now.

It wasn't the first piece I'd ever encountered on the subject of guys who wear shorts in the dead of winter, but I was game when I saw this Atlantic article, hoping it would offer a fresh take, or a view of the matter that would take in all ages and demographics who so attire themselves.  Alas, I should have taken my cue from the title: "Why Some Kids Wear Shorts All Winter." Having thus limited the scope, we get a range of reasons that doesn't do much to shed real insight: attention-seeking, not wanting to appear wimpy, testing the limits of authority, and such. She even quotes a therapist who recommends that parents begin a conversation with shorts-clad boys thusly:

“Start with ‘I’m really curious,’ or ‘I’m wondering,’ or ‘I’ve noticed that you don’t like wearing [long pants] in the winter. Tell me more.’ What you might find is that it’s a sensory issue, that they say, ‘I don’t like the way the fabric feels against my skin,’” she said. “You might actually be able to work with that. You could be able to find something that would keep them warm but work for them a little bit better.”

Niskanen Center president Jerry Taylor posits that all this misses the obvious, something that might have surfaced if the Atlantic piece had included adult participation in the phenomenon:

Jerry Taylor

@jerry_jtaylor

Not just boys. Also men in DC. None of these explanations resonate. Per 

@RadioFreeTom

, we've simply raised people who want to be in pajamas all day and have zero sense of social decorum. Its like we have an entire adult world in day care.  

Conversation

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From the Trump-occasionally-gets-one-right file: Today he announced that the National Environmental Policy Act will be getting modernized:

The proposed rule to bring NEPA into the 21st century would modernize environmental regulations without burdening “American workers, farmers, and families” by bringing new infrastructure projects to communities nationwide in an expedited fashion.

Per the White House, the proposed rule will:

• Establish time limits of 2 years for completion of environmental impact statements and 1 year for completion of environmental assessments.
• Specify page limits, promotes information sharing through modern technology, and better defines environmental effects and other key terms.
• Reduce unnecessary burdens and delays for environmental reviews.
  Agencies would be allowed to establish procedures for adopting another agency’s determinations to increase efficiency.
• Improve collaboration with state, local, and tribal governments.

 Better savor that. Those don't come along too often.

Now, how's this for an inflated sense of his own powers?

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.

10:00 AM · Jan 9, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

But why wouldn't he say this kind of stuff, given the way his sycophants drool over him?

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Lou Dobbs attacks America for not understanding we have an obligation to serve Donald Trump "It is a shame that this country which is benefitting so much from this president's leadership does not understand their obligations to this leader who is making it possible"

Mayor Pete didn't do his supposed moderate-Dem image any good by describing the shooting down (by an Iranian missile) of the Ukrainian airliner as "innocent civilians . . . caught in the middle of an unwanted and unnecessary tit for tat."


At The Imaginative Conservative, Hillsdale history professor Bradley Birzer reflects on the ancient uses of the term "The Word," or logos,  that may have informed the way St. John employs it at the beginning of his Gospel.

Two diametrically different takes on the administration's Suleimani briefing to legislators

I first saw the video of Mile Lee's animated expression of outrage on the news last night. (It's here at the linked National Review piece.) Rand Paul was standing supportively with Lee as he talked to reporters.

Lee called the meeting “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issues, in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate,” and while he commended Trump for showing “a lot of restraint” in foreign policy, he added that he wanted to speak to the president directly about the lack of clarity in the assessment.

“I went in there hoping to get more specifics as far as the factual, legal, moral justification for what they did,” Lee said. “I’m still undecided on that issue, in part because we never got to the details.”

“It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government — I don’t care whether they’re with the CIA, with the Department of Defense, or otherwise — to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It’s un-American. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s wrong. And I hope and expect that they will show more deference to their limited power in the future.”

.@SenMikeLee
: "It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government…to come in and tell us that we can't debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It's un-American. It's unconstitutional and it's wrong." pic.twitter.com/fVSE6b3EM0

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 8, 2020

Paul agreed, and called the administration’s citation of the 2002 authorization of the use of military force in Iraq as justification for Soleimani’s killing “absurd” and an “insult.”

Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia has put forth a war-powers resolution that Lee says he's going to support.

But other Republican Senators at the briefing came away with a markedly different assessment:

Florida senator Marco Rubio called the briefing “very compelling.”

Natl Security officials gave a compelling briefing to Senators just now. They answered every important question. 

Anyone who walks out & says they aren’t convinced action against #Soleimani was justified is either never going to be convinced or just oppose everything Trump does.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 8, 2020 

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) voiced his approval, saying “a third-grader could’ve figured this out.”

“I think people have lost their minds about who we’re dealing with,” Graham toldreporters. “You don’t need the CIA. You’ve got an embassy being ransacked. You’ve got a contractor killed.” 

Now, my temptation is to bring my overall assessments of these Senators to bear in deciding which viewpoint is a more accurate depiction of the briefing. Rubio first started sullying his conservative bona fides by getting involved in the Gang of Eight approach to immigration, and has lately been on this "common-good capitalism" kick that strongly indicates his having lost sight of the free-market principles that he's presumably been steeped in, at least in his formative years. And Graham has famously been all over the map on all manner of issues. He and "maverick" John McCain used to egg each other on to see who could tiptoe the furthest out from conservative orthodoxy without causing mutiny. And on the other hand, while we're talking about Senate buddies, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz have a friendship based at least in part to their fealty to the Constitution and limited government. They have established track records as good guys.

But it could be that this was an informative briefing carried out by arrogant boneheads. One of those both-of-these-things-are-true situations.

And Lee didn't go so far as to say that a commander in chief like the Very Stable Genius needs procedural oversight due to his inherently erratic nature, but I will. Trump got the zapping of Suleimani right. But there's no way to tell if he'll get the next step in dealing with Iran right, or the one after that.

Now, having said that, I think Lee and anyone so concerned ought to be very careful about what kind of procedural oversight they sign on to. There are a lot of Dems who are trotting out the old peacenik ethos just to make sure they're on the opposite page from Trump. I'd want to see the fine print on Kaine's proposal.

When nearly everyone involved in policy-making is absolutely nuts, it's hard to see a clear path to a wise way forward.

We need to get to the bottom of this one and fast

Steve Hayes chooses about as timely a topic as he could have for his initial outing at The Dispatch. It's entitled "Anatomy of a Screw-Up: The Story Behind the Letter Withdrawing Our Troops."

You may be aware of the basics, but here's Hayes's succinct account:

In a letter dated January 6, Brigadier Gen. William Seely III, the commanding general of Task Force Iraq, wrote to his Iraqi counterpart with big news: The United States military was preparing to leave Iraq. Two days earlier, the Iraqi Parliament had unanimously passed a non-binding resolution calling for U.S. troops to depart. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, a leader with close ties to the Iranian regime, had made the same demand. Their calls came less than 72 hours after a U.S. drone strike killing Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, the leading Iranian exporter of terror and havoc in the region. 

Seely wrote: “Sir, in due deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.” He closed the letter: “We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.” The letter was quietly delivered to Iraqi military officials. 

And there it was. After nearly 17 years of war—intense combat and difficult diplomacy over there, difficult debate and lasting division here, with frustration and heartbreak in both places—Americans would be leaving Iraq. 

Iran and the radical Shiite element in Iraq began having a heyday with it. It started making its way into the US media.

But - hold the phone!

It would prove definitive for less than an hour. The posting of the letter online unleashed a mad, behind-the-scenes scramble at the Pentagon, the White House, and on Capitol Hill, as elected officials, policymakers, military advisers and journalists sought to understand whether the letter intended to communicate what its plain language suggested. 

Was the United States really moving to remove its remaining troops from Iraq? Nobody seemed to know. President Trump had told reporters on Air Force One Sunday night that he wouldn’t be pushed around by the Iraqis. “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” Trump said in a surprise warning. “It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.” He added: “If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and staff seeking clarity on the letter reached out to contacts in the Trump administration. At 3:46 p.m., Annie Dreazen, a staffer in the Pentagon policy office, responded to an email inquiry from the House Armed Service Committee, writing that she’d consulted advisers with Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the name of the task force charged with fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She, too, had big news: The letter that had captured the attention of Washington, D.C., was phony and likely part of an effort to sow information chaos.

“OIR has confirmed with us at the working level that this is active disinformation,” Dreazen wrote, noting that the Pentagon was “fairly certain that this is a fake.” It’d be a big deal if the letter had been fabricated by Iran or another malign actor and humiliating if the U.S. fell for such misdirection. And this assessment suggests some OIR officials believed the prospect of a U.S. withdrawal was so problematic that America’s enemies had an incentive to create an information operation around that possibility. As word began to circulate on Capitol Hill, Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with reporters. 

They didn’t declare the letter a fake but they couldn’t offer much of an explanation of its provenance or meaning, either. Esper pleaded ignorance. “I don't know what that letter is,” he said. “We’re trying to find out where that’s coming from, what that is. But there has been no decision made to leave Iraq, period.” He declined to confirm its authenticity. “No, I can’t.”

Gen. Milley couldn’t verify that the letter was real, either. “I do know that it's not signed,” he said. “But I just looked at it right there; it's not signed.”
If neither of America’s top military officials could speak to the letter’s authenticity, they both downplayed claims that the U.S. was leaving Iraq. “With regard to that letter, which I've read once, I can't tell you the veracity of that letter, and I can tell you what I read,” said Esper, shortly before ending the press availability. “That letter is inconsistent with where we are right now.”

A few minutes later, Milley returned and announced that the whole thing had been a screw-up. “It was an honest mistake,” Milley explained. “That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released.”

Determining exactly how the letter was crafted and sent to the Iraqis, and its nature - whether it was disinformation from a hostile force or just a draft that somehow drifted outside internal consideration - needs to be done quickly, and along with the inherent challenges in straightening the situation out, none of us knows what the Tweeter-in-Chief will throw into the mix.

 

The VSG pattern: do something good and right and then sully its effects with a flurry of idiotic tweets

Noah Rothman at Commentary has an important piece today about the Very Stable Genius's behavior in the aftermath of the strike on Suleimani.

He reminds us just what a monster Suleimani was:

The suggestion that the opportunity to strike Soleimani was undertaken extralegally ignores the fact that this was the commander of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization operating on third-party soil where America is actively engaged in counterterror operations at the request of the host government. It also dismisses the active threats to U.S. personnel across the region, which Reuters indicates were in the operational stages. You don’t have to accept U.S. intelligence assessments at face value to believe; you only have to believe your own eyes. Since last spring, Iran has been responsible for a campaign of piracy and sabotage in the Strait of Hormuz, the downing of U.S. military assets, a brazen attack on a Saudi oil facility, a campaign of deadly rocket attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq (including Baghdad’s Green Zone), and the siege on American diplomats in the U.S.’s Baghdad-based embassy.

He quotes several Democrats who have rushed to try to paint the move in a negative light. With regard to the move itself, their castigations ring hollow. But then there's the Trump Factor. We can't separate the move from the person who ordered it:

And yet, Democratic concerns about the president’s capacity to manage this grave foreign crisis—the first of its kind during Trump’s presidency—are not without merit. Donald Trump has not made a single public statement since ordering last Thursday’s operation that has not been either unhelpful or counterproductive.
In the wake of the strikes on Soleimani and a variety of Shiite militia groups loyal to Iran, for which Tehran promised retaliation, Trump tweeted a threat to respond against targets “important to Iran & the Iranian culture.” When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted the president was not interested in executing counter-value attacks that would incense even Iranians hostile toward their theocratic regime, Trump confirmed that his chief diplomat didn’t know what he was talking about. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites,” Trump fumed. “It doesn’t work that way.”

In response to the U.S. operation against Soleimani, the Iraqi government—a body composed of an abnormal concentration of Iranian catspaws—cast a symbolic vote objecting to the American presence on Iraqi soil. The legitimacy of the Iraqi government is presently in doubt. Only weeks ago, after popular anti-Iranian protests in Iraq were violently put down, the Iraqi Prime Minister was compelled to resign. Iraq’s president rejected an overtly pro-Iranian candidate as his successor in the effort to appease anti-Iranian sentiment. When Soleimani was neutralized, Iraqis floodedBaghdad’s streets in celebration. Donald Trump would be better served by nurturing these sentiments, but he has instead reacted to the toothless Iraqi vote to expel U.S. troops with typically directionless ire. “We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” the president said of Iraq. “It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.” Such needlessly provocative statements only aggravate tensions in Iraq while yielding no appreciable tactical benefits to the U.S.

“These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner,” read one of the president’s bizarrely imperious tweets. “Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!” Indeed, Trump is right; his tweet served no legal or political purpose other than to inflame his domestic opposition at a time of heightened national tension.

This was the moment that Trump-skeptical Republicans always feared, and their concerns have not yet been proven groundless. Even Republicans who applaud the president’s decisive, if belated, counter-force strike against an Iranian terrorist commander with American blood on his hands must confront how unsuited the commander-in-chief is to this moment. The best anyone can say about Trump’s spasmodic conduct is that it won’t matter, but conservatives who are being honest with themselves must confess that this is more hope than analysis. Serious moments demand sober and rational minds at the helm, and the president’s behavior so far does not inspire confidence. 

There is no point to this kind of bluster. It undermines his Secretary of State's credibility, unnecessarily inflames Iranian and Iraqi public opinion and goes in the opposite direction from a stronger alliance with Iraq.

I don't envy anybody who works for this guy.

Barney and Clyde - Season Two, Episode One

It's here. Pull up a stool to the Libation Station, let us pour you a bracing Manhattan, and settle in for a lively hour of libertarian  and conservative exchange.

The looming UMC split - initial thoughts

This was inevitable:

A prominent group of 16 United Methodists released a detailed proposal today calling for an amicable separation of The United Methodist Church. The group included individuals representing all the major advocacy organizations affiliated with the church and eight bishops from around the world, including Bishop Kenneth Carter, current president of the Council of Bishops, and Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, the council’s president-elect.

The distinguished attorney Kenneth Feinberg served, pro bono, as the mediator who guided the diverse group to an agreement. Among many important assignments, Feinberg is widely known as the special master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

In a document entitled “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” the group said, “The United Methodist Church and its members aspire to multiply the Methodist mission in the world by restructuring the Church through respectful and dignified separation.” The group went on to say, “the undersigned propose restructuring the [Church] by separation as the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part… to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”

The protocol agreement calls on the 2020 General Conference to adopt a process that would allow central conferences, annual conferences, and local churches to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination while maintaining control of all their property, assets, and liabilities.

“This is a very important agreement, and the most hopeful development in a dispute that has undermined the health and vitality of both local churches and the denomination in general,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and one of the 16 individuals who negotiated and signed the agreement. Boyette and Indiana Annual Conference laywoman Patricia Miller, president of The Confessing Movement, represented the Renewal and Reform groups that include their organizations, plus Good News and the Institute on Religion and Democracy/UMAction.

“Since the close of the 2019 General Conference Renewal and Reform groups leaders have engaged in conversations with other advocacy group leaders, bishops, and church officials in an effort to resolve our differences through a negotiated plan of separation,” said Boyette. “We are thankful for those who have stepped forward since that contentious General Conference to propose an agreement respecting the sincere theological and ethical convictions of Methodists across the board.”

Under the terms of the protocol agreement central conferences, by a two-thirds vote, could vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination, and annual conferences, by a 57 percent vote, could vote to do the same. However, central and annual conferences are not required to hold such votes, and if they do not do so, they will remain with the “post-separation United Methodist Church,” the body that will continue the name and infrastructure of the present church.

Local churches, whether their annual conferences take action or not, could also vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. The local church council would “determine a voting threshold of either a simple majority or two-thirds of those present and voting at a duly called church conference [i.e., a conference that includes all church members present and voting].” According to the protocol agreement, “A vote on a motion to opt for a different affiliation would occur in a church conference held not more than 60 days after the request for such a vote is made by the church council.” Those conferences would be held in consultation with a local church’s district superintendent, and he or she would be required to authorize the conferences. Local churches voting to join a new traditionalist Methodist church would retain all their property and assets, and be responsible for their liabilities (e.g., loan repayments).

The mediation team assumed the Wesleyan Covenant Association would serve as the vehicle for creating a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. It is also assumed the post-separation UM Church would quickly move to adopt legislation creating a U.S. Regional Conference, and that conference would consider changing its sexual ethics, allowing same-sex weddings, and ordaining openly gay clergy.

There are several hoops this proposal must jump through prior to being made official, but it appears that all sides view this as the way to resolve the matter.

I attend a Methodist church - a small, rural congregation that is strongly traditionalist - but I am not officially a Methodist. On paper, I'm a Presbyterian (PCUSA), but it's been years and years since I attended a service of that denomination.

The fissures in mainline Protestantism over the last 60 years have been one of the more significant manifestations of our country's massive cultural transformation. As a 14-year-old, I witnessed what it did to the above-mentioned Presbyterians. My parents left the church then. My father took the pastor of our local congregation to lunch and told him that the final straw was the PCUSA's contribution to Angela Davis's defense fund. Years later, I immersed myself in research on the subject, as the correlation between the emptying of mainline Protestant pews over the decades since 1960 and mainline Protestantism's increasing preoccupation with secular concerns, principally US foreign policy, was the subject of my thesis when I was earning my master's degree in history. (I started writing it in the last spasms of the Cold War, when these churches were really pouring on the "peace activism" with regard to places like Central America and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Angola and Mozambique.)

But we all know what the looming UMC split is about: whether to adhere to sound doctrine on human sexuality or let some kind of vague notion of "inclusiveness" drive denominational policy. Where one comes down on that question has all kinds of ramifications for our society's foundational notions of what a family is, which is going to affect how future generations view the church's role as the bride of Christ. It's not much of a stretch to see a time when the non-traditional side of this split sees fit to abandon "bride of Christ" language as unrepresentative of the panoply of human family types.

It all gets back to how one views the Bible. Is Scripture inerrant and God-breathed, or is it some kind of human-crafted blueprint we can assume to have flexibility built into it?

This development joins other fissures within twenty-first century American Christianity - the Trumpist vs. non-Trumpist split within evangelicalism, the struggle of the Catholic Church to surmount the sex-abuse scandal -  at a time when the overall faith is in a particularly vulnerable position. Our society becomes less Christian by the day. For the deeply concerned faith-walk pilgrim - for me, anyway - it seems like the guiding question, as these things unfold, should be: Does this development reflect Scripturally revealed doctrine, or is it tainted by the fleeting impulses of this world?

The zapping of Suleimani - initial thoughts

It seems to be the logical next step in a ratcheting of tensions between the US and Iran going back several months. In fact, according to Secretary of State Pompeo, it had a preemptive element to it:

Did the US take out Qassem Soleimani over business as usual, or something much more acute? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has begun laying out the case — in somewhat cryptic terms, necessarily — that the decision to kill Iran’s top commander and virtual #2 regime leader came as a necessity to save American lives from “imminent threats.” That assessment was “intelligence based,” Pompeo told CNN this morning, and the danger was specific to the region . . .

 So now the question looms: What will Iran's response be?

We'd best brace ourselves for something serious, but that does not argue against the move.

You see, Iran is our enemy. That's a special category, one that includes North Korea as well. Russia and China are different. They're adversaries. We eye them warily, but still trade with them and make attempts to enter into strategic-security agreements with them. (And we're well aware that they have amicable relations with the above-mentioned enemies.)

We did just that with Iran, says a certain swath of the opining public, in the form of the JCPOA, which the US, under the Trump administration, abandoned.

Which brings us back to the fact that Iran is our enemy. You don't legitimize enemies - rogue actors - with agreements. Recall how much humiliation John Kerry and Wendy Sherman were subjected to by Iranian foreign minister Zarif in the Vienna and Geneva meetings at which the agreement was hammered out. And recall how Iranian missile development and stockpiling continued without missing a beat even after it was signed. Recall how Ayatollah Khameini - and Qasem Suleiman - continued to publicly assert that the US remained Iran's enemy. Recall how the crew of a US naval vessel was captured on the day Barack Obama was scheduled to give the State of the Union address, how that crew was photographed on its knees, with the crew members' hand behind their heads, and how the Iranians kept the crews' cell phones and laptops.

Enthusiasts of the JCPOA have to isolate it from the overall context to even attempt to defend it. The agreement was full of quasi-legalistic provisions for seeing that Iran couldn't get a nuke for ten years, but was not crafted to recognize that the Iranian regime is an inherently unreliable negotiating partner, due to its ideology, which sets Iran on a course to destroy the US and the West generally.

There's Suleiman's track record of ordering hits on dissident Iranians and Saudi Arabian government figures and his global reach. 

Of course, the leading Democrat contenders for that party's presidential nomination are weighing in, with a whole lot of empty platitudes:

Asked about terrorism in Afghanistan in the September debate, Elizabeth Warren responded, “We need to treat the problem of terrorism as a worldwide problem, and that means we need to be working with all of our allies, our European allies, our Canadian allies, our Asian allies, our allies in Africa and in South America. We need to work together to root out terrorism.” Work with our allies! What an original and groundbreaking suggestion!

Moments later, Pete Buttigieg added, “if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Afghanistan, from Afghanistan, it’s that the best way not to be caught up in endless war is to avoid starting one in the first place.” And he’s one of the experienced veterans in the field. Did the U.S. start the war in Afghanistan? Or did al-Qaeda start it with the 9/11 attacks?

Bernie Sanders added, “I think that what we have got to do is bring this world together — bring it together on climate change, bring it together in fighting against terrorism. And make it clear that we as a planet, as a global community, will work together to help countries around the world rebuild their struggling economies and do everything that we can to rid the world of terrorism. But dropping bomb on Afghanistan and Iraq was not the way to do it.”

And Joe Biden is stuck in this reflexive: “whatever President Trump is doing at any given moment must be the wrong thing” mentality — shifting back and forth between Trump being too weak and feckless, and too aggressive and reckless, depending upon the day. Back in June, Biden declared, “Two of America’s vital interests in the Middle East are preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and securing a stable energy supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is failing on both counts.” (This was after Iran claimed it had shot down an American drone.) First, it’s as if Biden had completely forgotten Iran seized American crews and released photos of them on their knees back in 2016. Second, since that drone incident, ships have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz without incident — presumably in part because of the U.S. Navy making regular exercises, patrols, and demonstrations of force in those waterways.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure the take that claims there's some kind of general resentment among Iranians for the CIA's role in Mossadegh's 1953 ouster is still a factor in US - Iran relations, a resentment that encompasses such a wide array of elements as to include the radical Shiites who came to power in 1979.
Um, no. There was no love lost among the theocratic forebears of the current regime :

While Mossadegh had enjoyed great popularity earlier in his term, his coalition had come under great pressure, and former allies had begun to oppose him. Chief amongst these was Ayatollah Kashani, the speaker of the Majles, and a vital influence for the next generation of politicized clerics, significantly, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. I personally find it very interesting that the US has not made an effort to publicize these connections. Given the tensions between the governments of Iran and the United States since 1979, one would think that undermining the Iranian clerical leadership through showing the links to the coup would be in the interests of the United States.

And bear in mind that the Cold War was in a particularly intense phase at the time. Mossadegh was making some pretty socialist moves, notably nationalizing the oil industry that had been owned by a British company. The general world-stage climate was also a level of the context. The following year, the CIA helped oust Jacobo Arbenz as president of Guatemala, and a good thing, too. He had explicit ties to the Soviet empire. The US had a keen eye on developments such as these.


So the deed is done. This post doesn't conclude with any kind of hot take. No declarations of what Trump should do or not do. No casting aspersions - or cheerleading for - any other Middle East actors. No predictions about what the next set of moves looks like.

I'll just say that any argument that getting rid of Suleiman was a bad idea is off-base.

Education thoughts

Education has been on my radar screen, certainly at least since mid-November, when the Red for Ed movement was able to mount a "day of action" in numbers sufficient to get a lot of Indiana school districts closed for the day:

More than 100 school districts will be closed Tuesday as teachers and public education supporters are expected to flood the Indiana Statehouse on the day lawmakers return to ceremonially begin the 2020 legislative session. 

More than 13,000 people – the majority of them teachers – have registered to attend the Indiana State Teachers Association’s Red for Ed Action Day. The state’s largest teachers union called on its members to take a personal day to lobby state lawmakers for better pay, among other things. 

So many teachers requested the day off that districts across the state decided to close or call for an “e-learning day,” when students stay home and get school assignments online. So far, 117 districts have opted to close. Others are to make a decision in the coming days.

More than half a million kids will be out of school, about 45% of the state's public school students.  

It's not like education funding hasn't been going up for years. But teachers feel their pay is still still increasing at an unsatisfactory rate:

ISTA has three goals for the upcoming legislative session. It wants to see the state make significant progress toward raising teacher pay. Indiana lags neighboring states in average pay and has some of the slowest wage growth of all teachers nationwide.

Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said last year’s budget showed lawmakers’ commitment to public schools and the educators who work in them. The budget included an annual increase in education spending of 2.5%, but many teachers were disappointed that lawmakers didn’t do anything to specifically address pay.

That frustration bubbled up over the summer at public hearings hosted by Gov. Eric Holcomb’s commission on teacher pay. That group is supposed to deliver policy recommendations to the governor and lawmakers next year before the 2021 budget session.

Smith-Margraf said the state can’t wait that long.

“Teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “Every year we wait, this problem is going to get worse.”

A general flow of money to education is not the problem. This article, dated January 1, 2017, makes clear that education is overwhelmingly - and perennially - the biggest item in Indiana's budget:

Indiana annually spends more money on elementary and high school education than any other budget component, a trend likely to continue when the General Assembly convenes in January to determine how to spend anticipated revenue for the next two years.

Almost half of every tax dollar collected by the state, totaling nearly $7 billion, will be distributed during the 2016-17 academic year to a public school corporation, public charter school or through a private-school voucher to pay for the education of some 1.06 million Hoosier students.

Despite leading the nation in school choice options, the bulk of Indiana's kindergarten-through-12th grade education funding still ends up at traditional public schools, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

 That's continued over the years:

The legislative session could come to a close on Wednesday night with the passage of a final budget.

About 30 minutes after the two-year budget was published, Republican leadership spoke about its key points, most noticeably the education spending.

The budget would direct $700 million in new funding to public schools. It would increase current spending 2.5 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2022.

Some Democrats are unhappy with the budget because it did not specifically guarantee that teacher’s pay will increase.

Democratic Party chairman John Zody released a statement saying:

“Governor Holcomb and Statehouse Republicans continue to disrespect hardworking Indiana teachers by delaying significant pay hikes for teachers with the slowest-growing salaries in the country. Hoosier teachers have accepted an ‘I owe u’ from Statehouse Republicans for the better part of a decade and that didn’t change this session. Empty promises don’t pay the bills. Today’s event reinforced the simple fact that Indiana Republicans don’t value teachers’ dedication enough to even give them a seat at the table.”

The governor says teachers will see an increase in their checks because of increases made to the “Teacher Appreciation Grant.” The House and Senate voted to increase the total from $30 million to $37.5 Million.

Holcomb also says they are working on a long term plan that would systematically increase pay.

After publishing the budget he released a statement saying:

“From the very beginning, my administration, the House and the Senate shared our top two priorities – passing a balanced budget and protecting our reserves that in turn protects our AAA credit rating and increasing K-12 funding as much as we possibly could. This budget proposal does both. I appreciate the hard work of all of our colleagues as we near the end of this legislative session.”

The budget now goes to the floor of the House where it is expected to be approved.

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Governor Holcomb wants to undertake a deep dive to see why more of these ever-increasing education dollars aren't going directly to teacher pay. It's a process that will take a while, but that time frame is unsatisfactory to the Red for Ed folks:

Gov. Eric Holcomb is defending his timeline to hold off on taking significant statewide action on teacher pay raises until 2021, despite calls from teachers to send more funding support to schools in 2020 when lawmakers aren’t likely to open the state budget.

Holcomb has said he wants Indiana among the top three states in the region for teacher salaries, and points to school funding measures passed by lawmakers in 2019 as a reason the state can wait to press forward with budget items until 2021. That includes a $150 million boost to help schools pay off teacher pension debt, and a slight bump in tuition support. 

“This is a massive step forward, but we have more steps to take,” he says.

Teachers unions and Democratic lawmakers have called for more statewide action on teacher pay during the next legislative session since Holcomb unveiled his 2020 agenda in early December. Sen. Tim Lanane (D-Anderson) called Holcomb’s plans “disappointing” in a statement shortly after the governor’s 2020 agenda announcement.

But Holcomb says he wants to know more about the ways school money gets to teachers’ salaries before adding even more dollars to the mix.

“And then now going into this next year we’re going to see where all those - where the gap remains,” he says.

Holcomb and other Republican leaders have called school funding levels through the latest state budget “historic,” though some schools under the state’s formula will receive less funding than the previous budget, or receive increases that fail to keep up with inflation rates. Lawmakers have also started looking at revising the complexity index that provides more funding to schools serving populations of at-risk students. 

Some schools have already been able to offer significant pay raises with the help of local tax referendum measures, including Indianapolis Public Schools.

The governor’s Teacher Compensation Commission has hosted three meetings to receive public input about how the state can raise teachers pay, and will make recommendations to lawmakers and the governor ahead of the 2021 session.

Strikes me as the responsible way to proceed. There's lots of gravy flowing to the districts. Directing it properly is the next order of business, isn't it? Do these unionized teachers want the legislature to just pass a teacher pay increase isolated from all other factors? As Holcomb says, the state has to protect its credit rating to ensure that it can continue to be so generous regarding education.

Some districts are looking into property tax referendums to address the situation:

Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation (BCSC) Superintendent Dr. Jim Roberts gave a presentation to the board on Monday evening regarding the $9.3 million per year referendum he wants the board to approve at the January 13 meeting. The property tax referendum would go on the May 5 election ballot. About two-thirds of the money garnered from the proposed tax increase each year would go to raises for teachers.

Roberts said that state funding to BCSC has been reduced by $46 million since 2009. Property tax cap losses the corporation has experienced hampers the ability to purchase buses each year in line with the goal of having a fleet no more than 12 years old. He noted the rise in health insurance and the fact BCSC is hiring 76 new teachers per year, a sign of a retention challenge, as reasons more funds are needed.

The referendum calls for a property tax rate increase of $0.1950 per $100 of assessed value. This would amount to an increased property-tax increase of $9.74 per month for the average homeowner.

I understand that graduation rates are not the final word on the quality of the education product, but in 2019, only one state - New Jersey - cracked the 90 percent threshold, with the national average being 84.6% for the 2016-17 school year. 

Maybe there are some useful metrics of a cultural-and-civic-literacy nature worth examining.

This number is not encouraging:

A new survey reveals just 37 percent of Americans can name their congressional representative, and just over half know their congressman’s party affiliation.

On April 24, Haven Insights surveyed 575 American adults about their civic literacy.

Haven Insights discovered only 37 percent of those polled could name their congressional district's representative, while 63 could not. Out of all Americans polled, a little more than half (56 percent) could name their representative's party affiliation.

Broken down by political ideology, conservatives fared better than liberals: 46 percent knew their representative’s name, and 62 percent knew their representative’s party affiliation.

By contrast, only 33 percent of liberals knew their representative’s name, and 57 percent knew their representative’s political party affiliation.

It seems that post-America has been shooting quite a few of its citizens through the education pipeline without substantive results in at least a few key areas:

Many people who live in the United States are “alarmingly ignorant of America’s history and heritage,” according to a new poll.

The poll found, for example, that 10 percent of American college graduates incorrectly think celebrity television judge Judith Sheindlin, known as “Judge Judy,” is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The poll, which was conducted in August of 2015, surveyed both college graduates and the general public and found many were lacking some basic knowledge about the U.S.

For example, only 20.6 percent of Americans were able to identify James Madison as the father of the Constitution, with more than 60 percent naming Thomas Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

College graduates only scored marginally better.

The survey also found that roughly 60 percent of college graduates couldn’t correctly name a requirement for the ratification of a constitutional amendment, and 40 percent didn’t know Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war.

Not even half know that the Senate oversees presidential impeachments.

“These were not isolated findings,” said the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, which conducted the survey.

“A 2012 ACTA survey found that less than 20 [percent] of American college graduates could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown ((Virginia)), and only 42 [percent] knew that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during World War II.”

ACTA found in another recent survey that of over 1,100 liberal arts colleges and universities, only 18 percent require a course in American history or government.

“When surveys repeatedly show that college graduates do not understand the fundamental processes of our government and the historical forces that shaped it, the problem is much greater than a simple lack of factual knowledge,” said ACTA. “It is a dangerous sign of civic disempowerment.”

ACTA describes itself as an “independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America's colleges and universities.”

In light of all this, I found the way this recent piece by Jennifer C. Berkshire at The Nation framed  the nature of the factions interested in particular approaches to education telling:

 For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

I'm amused by the way "GOP free-marketeers" is slipped in there as if it were some kind of niche group, like it was some little bunch of people preoccupied with some kinky and elusive vision, much like those overthinking third-way Democrats.

The thrust of the piece is that, gosh darn it, those who want to strengthen the stranglehold the teachers' unions and advocates of what are conventionally thought of as "public schools"  have on the whole apparatus are up against some obstacles that strike them as very strange - such as inner-city blacks who like the idea of school choice:

“Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools,” was the headline of a recent New York Times story, prominently displayed on the front page. The reporters cite long charter waitlists in cities and recent polling showing a widening racial divide over charter schools—white voters’ approval of charters has plummeted in the age of DeVos, while Black and Latino approval of the schools has held steady. 

Berkshire goes on to point up where this is heading: arguments over using tax dollars to fund religion-based education, or other deviations from the standard that purely public education advocates have established in their own minds and would love to impost on the entire populace.

Of course, Trump's selection of Betsy DeVos as education secretary - a great move, the greatness of which the Very Stable Genius surely has no comprehension of, as is characteristic of the laudable policy and personnel moves in his administration - has inflamed the public-and-unionized education lobby in this country. The outrage centers on her focus on school choice and charter schools.

And that side of the debate cannot provide a compelling argument for why we should find Mrs. DeVos's focus objectionable.

What's wrong with the idea of charter schools and competition? Charter schools, at least in states in which they are subject to quick closure if they are underperforming, are compelled to offer a top-quality product. 

If the goal is really to send yearly swaths of citizens out into the world equipped with truly essential knowledge as well as some tools for exercising discernment, reflection and inspired civic and economic engagement, then why not unflinchingly look at what's working best around the country?

You know where this is going. Why not throw education completely open to free-market conditions?

Seriously, why not?

An answer one is starting to get these days is that education is a "public good," like roads.

Oh, no, it's not. The education of an individual human being is foremost among the ways in which that human being's parents can ensure the transmission of their values and their worldview. A parent has one shot - about an eighteen-year-window - in which to instill an understanding of the world that the parent feels responsible for ensuring the flourishing thereof. The alternative is a government-imposed lens for viewing human existence that, in the case of public-school education, has come to embody all manner of silly and destructive features. Here in my own Indiana city, the local Human Rights Commission is working aggressively to get the New York Times's 1619 Project, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance program, into local classrooms. This is not universally embraced in our community.

The argument is made that taxpayers should not have to finance education that, for example, includes immersion in a particular religion.

Fair enough. How about we dismantle the whole public-education apparatus, and save those taxpayers a whole lot of money which they can then use to educate their kids in a competitive market?

I know, it sounds outlandish by 2020 standards. So we will continue with these vague measures like sort-of-public-but-not-really schools and rancorous debates over proper use of state funds and nothing will really get resolved.

And meanwhile the post-American public's understanding of the civilizational underpinnings that have made its life so unprecedentedly great will recede ever further into the mists of a time when people understood how to determine if something was worthwhile.

The obligatory New Year post

Let's start with a snapshot of the lay of the land shortly after noon EST on January 1, 2020.

Antisemitic violence, which had been gathering momentum throughout 2018 and 2019, spiked at the end of last year:

In October 2018, during Sabbath morning services, a white supremacist attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, murdering 11 people and wounding another six. In April 2019, in the middle of Passover, a white supremacist attacked the Chabad of Poway synagogue, murdering one person and seriously wounding another three. Both incidents started absolutely necessary conversations about the prevalence and nature of the white supremacist threat to Jews across the country.

Four people were murdered at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City by self-described Black Hebrew Israelites just weeks ago; five people were stabbed at a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, New York; this week alone, New York police are investigating at least nine anti-Semitic attacks.

Kim Jong-Un has announced that North Korea will soon unveil a new strategic weapon. 

For the last two days, the US embassy in Baghdad has been under siege from the Iranian-backed Kataeb Hezbollah. 

Millenials are the least religious generation in the nation's history. 

And the national debt is somewhere north of $23 trillion.

Now, on to a fact about something that will transpire by year's end: Post-America will have either re-elected a narcissistic, loudmouth buffoon who is so bereft of a core set of principles that he has switched party affiliations several times throughout his adult life, who is himself not a man of Christian conviction but expects Christians to support him politically because he has signed on to policies that do much to ensure their ability to practice their faith free of harassment and oppression (because he expects, Godfather-like, to have his ring kissed for any gesture that yields a favorable outcome for any person or group), who has a track record of sexual abandon, who has an incoherent foreign policy resulting in the two developments cited above - or will have elected a radical collectivist whose policy orientation will be based on identity politics and redistribution and who will work to remove all restrictions on the extermination of fetal post-Americans.

Those offering Internet New Year reflections often feel, no matter what their general assessment of the present moment is, some kind of obligation to offer reason for hope.

Beyond the eternal paradise offered by God's grace, I can't think of any such reasons. Our societal brittleness is not going to abate. All the various tribalists on the scene are not going to drop their brand-hustling and begin defending immutable principles as they see them. Particular tribes are going to continue to interact viciously with other tribes. Our culture's rot is going to advance even more. The world stage's least savory actors are going to continue to find and exploit weaknesses in US foreign policy stemming from the current president's incoherence.

What of the argument often put forth that the key is to focus on the local level, to become involved in the civic bonds that characterize a community? That probably was a viable way to proceed even fairly recently. As 2020 unfolds, however, with diversity and inclusion officers on the payroll of an ever-increasing number of school systems, with local governments signing off on "pride" festivals, with governments, school systems and corporations all spending resources on "sustainability" measures, the community level doesn't really offer any respite from the rot that characterizes the national level. Even if your town still has a fairly robust set of institutions existing to contribute to the health of civic life, that Rotary Club or food bank or pickle ball club is going to have among its members or volunteers people whose take on the value of human freedom and dignity is the diametric opposite of yours. Conversations beyond the tasks at hand are best studiously avoided, which is hard to achieve, given the degree of entrenchment with which people belong to their various tribes.

Once Trump is reelected, which is, at this point, a fairly safe bet, mostly because an upbeat economic picture is also a safe bet, his cult following will crow about how the libs have been owned and that that is the end of the matter. They'll be so elated they'll be oblivious to the shortsightedness of that take. The not-small swath of post-American society that got "owned" is not going away. Because no attempt at persuasion, which would require putting forth a core set of principles beyond "making America great," will have been made, the Left will continue to conflate Trumpism with conservatism and see both as the enemy, and will hone new tactics for striving to defeat that enemy.

So what are the traits that will stand one in good stead as we embark on a new year and decade? Certainly courage. These are not times for the faint of heart. A good set of core principles - I recommend the three pillars of actual conservatism - will help to minimize confusion. Ultimately, there's no substitute for keeping the Truth of God's grace and sovereignty front and center in one's thoughts. The best secular paths through the cacophonous thicket are no substitute for remembering that the final victory has been won, and that we are each invited to the victory party.

It's not going to look like it on the temporal level, but He has overcome the world.